Hi everyone. I've just received my E510 (1st DSLR) kit with the 14-42 mm lense for $379. Its incredible, but the place I ordered does not have the 2 lenses kit. I like to shoot from afar so any input on telephoto lense would be appreciated. BTW anyone here own a 18-180 mm Zuiko lense? I like it's versatility but cannot find a review here. Thx.

Sometimes, I'm tempted to go with the 18-180 for portability. But I have all the different lenses that cover the 18-180's focal length, so I find it hard to justify buying yet another lens with duplicative usage.

Its a useful lens, but you cant expect any single lens to have everything. If you want a lens with a 10x optical range, you're going to sacrifice image quality, theres just no escaping it. That said, from most accounts, the lens is very good for what it is, and obviously is very flexible and very useful if you find yourself going from a "normal" field of vision to significant telephoto very often in rapid succession.

NOW, a big telephoto sounds pretty awesome at first, I know this... but honestly a wider angle is more useful than a bigger telephoto. 18mm is just not wide enough a lot of the time for this lens to replace your 14-42. The goal of the 18-180 is to replace the two kit lenses so you only need one lens, but since you will need a wider angle than 18mm what will happen is you will still end up carrying two lenses around. Furthermore, 180mm is a very big telephoto and honestly not all that necessary, especially considering that at 180mm you will be sacrificing optical quality.

It is in my opinion a much wiser [and cheaper] move to just get a 40-150mm. There were two generations of this lens and both will set you back about $120 [used]
The older generation is bigger but optically faster [F/3.5-4.5] than the much smaller second generation [F/4.0-5.6]
You may value the compact nature of the 2nd generation more than the larger aperture, however I personally went with the older one [I've had both at the same time at one point] because F4.5 at 150mm [300mm eq] is very awesome and more useful to me than the smaller form factor.

I can't comment on the performance of the 18-180mm lens from personal experience, but I can say that I considered the very same purchase with the intention of carrying one lens rather than the 14-42mm/40-150mm duo. It sounded really handy but in the end I decided against the 18-180mm, for much the same reasons Armanius and Atomic have posted (both of whom have much more experience than I).

So, I'm still very new at this but to be honest there are very few times I've found myself inconvenienced or wanting more zoom then the 40-150mm offers, which really surprised me. Pretty much only when I'm forced to remain at a great distance from the subject (for some reason they won't let me hop the fence at the zoo to get some close ups!). So far this has been rare.

I thought it was a smarter choice to go with the 40-150mm and bank that extra money to save for a more specialized lens. I hope that you enjoy your new purchase and I hope that this helps a bit - cheers!

Other than the aforementioned Oly 18-180 and 40-150, another one is the Sigma 55-200. Here's a review to the 55-200, which is probably not as good as the 40-150, but does have another 100mm (eq) of focal range.

The only other telephoto lens I can think of in the budget category is the 70-300. But the 70-300 is much bigger and heavier than the three others lenses discussed above. And it hunts for focus more than I care for.

Thank you so much of the great feedbacks. You guys are awesome. The reason I was interested in this lense is due to my newbie mistake. I thought the "18-180" is equivalent to 28mm-450mm, not realizing that this is a 4 3rd lense. Now, the 12-60mm look extremely more desirable due to its practicality. But the price is currently and sadly out of reach ($850) Well, there's also the 9-18mm at $500, very tempting. I hope Christmas comes early. BTW anyone use the 70-300 mm . Its the cheapest of them all.

I do own the Zuiko 18-180mm lens. I just purchased it earlier this month to add to the collection of 4/3 lenses for my E-620. I have found it does a solid job on both close-up macro like photography as well as with distance photography out in the open here on the plains of Colorado or nearby in the Mountains, where I just used it extensively today. I was able to get clear close-ups of wildflowers as well as sharp shots of vistas and forests. I also own the Zuiko 40-150mm lens, as well as the Zuiko 70-300mm lens to round out the ultra zooms.